Hellboy: Falling Scenes

In the very first Hellboy, made in 2004, there are a lot of falling scenes. You could have seen that coming from an action film. Something I noticed was that there was something weird going on from the scene before to the falling scene. I couldn’t quite figure out what exactly it was, but then it hit me. All this fishiness was due to a switch between real filming and animation!

One minute you are watching actual actors running and fighting in or on top of buildings, and the next you are watching some animated character falling from a window or edge. You probably have to be more keen to detail to really notice any difference, but that’s just what happens when you have watched the film so many times.

I’d like to discuss the difference in effects between switching from real film to animation, and using actual stunt doubles to finish the scene off. First we will start with real film to animation. While if done correctly, it can be effective, you also have to consider that it takes so much more time to actually make the animated scene and be able to merge it into the scene before so that it isn’t completely noticeable to switch. You need someone who is extremely educated and experienced in the animation field to be able to even make the scene let alone merge it. This will really slow you down and cost you a lot of money.

Keep in mind, a stunt double is definitely no rodeo either. They are also very expensive! You have to pay them, and also have a paramedic team on hand incase there is a large accident or injury if the stunt gets done the wrong way. You can’t just hire anyone off the street and call it good. Therefore this also takes up a lot of time and money. Stunts are no joke, and definitely not something amateur. I would definitely suggest to wait a bit until you try a serious stunt so that you are assured that everything will go smoothly and run with minimal fall backs.

So now we are faced with the question, which one would you suggest? Well, if you were to take the cost out of everything and be left with just the fact that you have the choice between using a scene with a stunt double or an animated scene, I would suggest the stunt double.

There are timelines for everything even when you are a grown person and you have to keep that in mind. You can’t spend months upon months just making the scene. You have to think about how you can merge it in the most effective way. That way would be to use real film. There is less of a chance that a person is going to catch the fact that you switch actors rather than switching film techniques. There is also the fact that it is going to take less time to film a separate person and link the scenes rather than merging filming techniques as well.

With all that in mind, I wish you the best of luck!

Dramatic exit-- Director J

Hellboy: Prince Nuada

It’s that time of year when all the Halloween stores are open. I figured I could talk about making yourself a person from Hellboy that involves a wig, Prince Nuada. He is from the second Hellboy, but oh well. With that being said, you need a long white wig, a wig cap, white crème makeup, and black eyeliner pencil.

This makeup is also very simple do to the face that most of it just has to do with blending and having a steady hand. Your whole face needs to be covered in the white crème makeup. This includes your eyebrows, lips, ears, and neck!!! If you don’t blend, you might as well just be wearing a mask. After you get your entire face covered in white you can apply a white powder to make the crème set. This will prevent the makeup from coming off on clothing and other people as well. Now is the time to add the lines on your face. These lines need to be thin and light, so make sure to sharpen your black eyeliner pencil before beginning. The prince has a line going laterally across his nose and cheekbones curving to the original curves already on his face. They start at the very end of his cheekbones facing down. Then they curve up and over his cheekbones dropping into a droop under the Lacrimal Caruncle, otherwise known as the very inside of your eye closest to your nose, curving over your knows and mirroring on the other side.

Prince Nuada also has various straight lines on his forehead. I would go with five. One starting on the bottom half of your forehead right above your eyes and ending about at your eyebrows, and then four on the outside of that line, tapering in height. Nuada also has a few of these lines on his chin. Three would be a good amount. They should be placed just about the same as the lines on the forehead, one lower in the middle and two tapered off the sides. Like many other people the Prince also has some light lines by where the lines are when he smiles. If you smile and apply lightly in the crease, it should turn out just about the same as his.

Although his entire face is white, he does have some dark accents to him. His eyes and lips are black. For his eyes, you lightly want to apply all around the actual eye, including the top and bottom eyelid. You can smudge these to make them look more cloudy and less edgy. As for his lips, all you have to do is either use black lipstick, or your black eyeliner will do just fine. Apply the liner or lipstick just like you would any other lip or chap stick and then lightly blot so that the black doesn’t get on your teeth.
Last but not least, you should apply the lovely long white hair!J First, if you have long hair, you should tie it back into a pony tail and then put the wig cap over it. If you are a guy, then you can just skip the ponytail and go straight to the wig cap. When all of that fun stuff is over with you can finally add the finishing touch! The wig!!

And now, ladies and gentlemen, Prince Nuada!!

Dramatic exit--Director J

Hellboy: Hellboy

Hellboy has been one of my family’s favorites since near the time it came out in 2004. We are all pretty much sci-fi geeks in our own ways. I especially am a nerd for paranormal action movies. I heard that the Make-A-Wish Foundation made a little boy into Hellboy for his wish and so I thought it would be cool to make that happen for anyone reading this.

When I think of Hellboy I think of a juice-head devil with his horns cut off. I figured out how to get the look of him pretty easily until it came to his horns. I couldn’t figure out where you could get something that looked like them. Then I had an idea. All you will need for this is a red crème base, a bit of a darker red, either in pencil form or you could buy another crème and just use a small thin paint brush, red paint (w/ brush), a bald cap with brown/ black hair on the sides, skin wax, black eyeliner, a sponge, and two hairspray caps with no design.

This is going to be very easy for people to accomplish due to the fact that there isn’t a whole lot about Hellboy’s face. The first thing you will need to do is to take an eye pencil of any kind and draw the circles of the hairspray caps on each side of your forehead, right by the point of your eyebrows. This will have the area where you need to put the skin wax marked out. The next step would be to put the skin wax sausage on top of the circles you drew on your forehead (remember, you need to have your hands and finger tips moisturized to not melt the skin wax).  Once you get the circle of skin wax thick enough to stick the hairspray caps in, you can smudge the sides into your forehead to make it look like it eases into the horns. At this point you can paint the hairspray caps with the red paint and set out to dry while you get the rest of your face ready.

Now that the shape of your face is going to be ready you can start to get the color. You will need to apply the red crème makeup to your entire face, including your ears, eyebrows, the skin wax, and blending to your neck. Once you are all red, you can add the lines of Hellboy’s face to yours. Take the darker red and start at the crease of the sides of your nose. Take it all the way down to where if you suck in your cheeks like a fish, the crease will stop. You can also make some curved lines above your eyebrows, right where the first line from your raised eyebrows lies. You can apply a small amount of powder to your face to set the color on so that it doesn’t come off of your face. By now the paint should be dry on the caps. You can press them into the deepest part of the skin wax on your forehead. If they are too big, you can shave them down and then put them back in. Once applied, you should smudge a little bit of the skin wax on the outer walls of the caps so that they stay better.

Now that you know where everything on your face is, you can apply the bald cap. Once the bald cap is on you will need to make the skin of that red as well. The line from the bald cap should not be that noticeable. Once all of that is done you can add some of the final touches. You can take the darker red and the sponge and dab the color onto your horns to create texture. You can also take the black eye pencil and draw cracks on them almost like a wooden cork. You can draw lines on the side as well, then cover it all with a light layer of the lighter red makeup so it doesn’t look like you just have lines drawn onto you horns. If you would like you can also apply a light amount of black eyeliner to the top part of your eyelids to make you look “darker”. Make sure you blend it so that it is almost a grey. If you don’t blend well then it will not look right by any means.

You are almost done!!! Now it is time to apply the final small amount of powder for the stick and your costume! Be very careful with this makeup on! It will smudge very easily and the horns can fall off if you hit or touch them too much!

Hope you have fun being Hellboy!

Dramatic exit-- Director J

Evil Dead 1981: Running scene

                What many don’t know is that there is more to think about than just running while you film. They obviously didn’t really get that when they filmed The Evil Dead in 1981. Then again, like many people know, we have developed a lot technologically since then. You can look many different places for fancy ways to do things. You could also try and buy these super cool super advances and super expensive tools and machines. OR you could just control yourself and try something that costs no money at all! If I were you, I would go with the second option.

                To get a good effect of actually running in the eyes of a victim or attacker, or just to make it feel like the viewer is running with the character, the camera man has to have a lot of self control. The first thing the camera man needs to know is how to lock their elbows. When you lock them, there is less bounce in your arms and it is easier to keep the camera steady. A famous line is that two heads are better than one. Well, that goes for hands to camera as well. If you hold the camera normally with one hand and with one under the camera, it gives you more control and stability.

                Now that you have the top half of your body taken care of and controlled, you can worry about the bottom half. Even though you have more control of your camera and you have stability, you still cannot run like a mad man. You really have to think about how you are running. You can’t simply run normally. You have to stiffen your legs and take small steps. The smaller the steps, the steadier the shot will be. If you don’t like this, you can always try to take long glide like steps. This won’t make you go as fast, but if will be steadier than a normal run.

                One of the other options, assuming you are good with computer video editors, you can film the actor running in slow motion and you simply walking, and then when you upload the video you can speed the scene up. This will allow you to film normally and not even worry about running while filming. The only trouble I can think of about this would be that the sound would be tricky to edit. The only way I could think of would be to tape with things pre-marked and then record over the video like they do in music videos. Like I said before, this is possible, but you would have to be pretty advanced.

Dramatic exit—Director J

Evil Dead 1981: Demon

                Well, this one should be fun. There is this pretty cool demon that I had my eyes on to recreate. This demon is pretty creepy for 1981. I was actually impressed to see is in The Evil Dead. This effect is a bit more advanced so you will need to get a few more things than usual. You can go to any Halloween store and get a few makeup kits. These are just for the colors and some extra accessories. You can get a zombie and a Frankenstein kit. Then zombie kit will help with the colors and Frankenstein for staples. You will also need liquid latex, tweezers, a few brushes, grey hair spray, and some white powder.

                 The first thing you will need to do is cover your entire face with the white crème makeup provided in the zombie kit. Next you can put some black and red around your eyes. Red should go to your nose and a bit on your forehead. We will be putting a gash on your forehead more towards the end. A light amount of black should be applied to your eyebrows and your lips. The next step is to apply the texture to your face. This is done by using liquid latex and single ply toilet paper. Make sure there is no design on the toilet paper. So basically buy the cheapest brand possible, they tend to have less designs on them. You apply each layer by layer, alternating between first liquid latex and then toilet paper until you get the thickness you want.

                Before the liquid latex is fully dried, you can make is smudge on the top of your forehead, the bridge of your nose, around your cheeks by where you smile, and under your eyes. You can also choose the side of your forehead you want the gash to go on. Take the tweezers and lightly separate the width you would like.

                While you allow that to dry, you can go ahead and spray your hair gray. Your hair should look messy so don’t worry about styling it or making sure it doesn't get messed up. Once the liquid latex is a bit drier you can start applying more color to your face. You should see light amounts of where previous color was previously applied. You can apply black around the gash and under your eyes. If you decided to make more cuts or tears then you should apply black to all of those areas as well. You should add some more/ a darker red to the very deepest part of the gashes or cuts.

                In the very end you should apply white powder to your entire face excluding the cuts and your eyes where the liquid latex has been smudged down. If you want and have the extra materials you could also add some black eye liner lines lightly to your chin with some water over it to look like drool and black matte eye shadow to your eyebrows to make them look dustier. If you did end up getting the fake staples then you can apply them to the large gash on your forehead. Whether you use skin wax, stick the staples into the already used latex, or apply using fresh liquid latex, you should make sure they are stable and won’t bother you the rest of the time. When you are done you can go ahead and apply some white power to the staples to make them look old like the rest of the face that you just created.

                Some of this stuff may come off throughout the day, so it would be wise to carry around your liquid latex so that you can do minor fixes when needed. Something else you could try is to spray some hairspray on your face so that there is less of a chance of all the powder coming off.

                Have fun scaring people!:)

Dramatic exit—Director J

Evil Dead 1981: Possessed Hand

                The Evil Dead 1981 version is much different than the 2013 version. Some movies back then were better than movies today. Honestly, I wouldn't consider this to be one of them, even though I wasn't a major fan of the newer one in the first place. Back then special effects were much different and obviously not as advanced, but I decided it would be fun to try and bring the past back to life by doing some of the effects in a more modern way.

            In the very beginning of the movie, one of the characters gets possessed to draw something while she was sketching. Her hand turned a blue-gray and it looked as if her veins were popping out of her hand. She was obviously scared and shaking so when you go to make your hand possessed, it doesn't have to be perfect unless you will be holding still or letting people inspect your hands at a close range. All you will need for this is a white creme makeup, skin wax, a variety of widths of brushes, and a matte gray and blue eye shadow. None of this should have glitter or sparkles due to the fact that if you are all shimmery it will look just like makeup and not a special effect.

            You really won’t want to do this on a hand that has a lot of hair on it due to the fact that it makes the removal much harder. If possible, you should shave the hand. If not, then make sure the person who this is being done on knows that there may be a little pain with the removal of the skin wax. You shouldn't need to use much wax, but it is always nice to have a heads up.

            Like any other time you are working with skin wax, you need to moisturize your hands, especially at your finger tips. Melted skin wax is the worst! Anyhow, unlike before, you want to use very little amounts of skin wax due to the fact that veins aren't the size of a wound like I have discussed before. You can play around with your hands and flex to get an idea of how large you actually want the skin wax sausage to be. A good estimate of how many you should make is about three. One vein should run from between your middle finger and ring finger to your wrist, one from between your middle and pointer fingers to your wrist by your thumb, and another running from one of the other veins to your wrist. Keep in mind, that is just a suggestion and you can adjust to a situation.  Once the veins are blended in you can start applying the white creme base.

            The creme should not be caked on, but just light enough to make your skin look powdered. The next step is to dust a gray matte shadow to the hand to make it look dusty and old. The next step would be to apply different shades of blue to the raised part of the veins you previously applied. If you really want you can also try a plum color as well to show depth. Once you get the right shade you can dust a little bit more gray eye shadow over the whole hand to finish it off.

            Some more options would consist of “contouring” your fingers and other bones in your hand to make the hand look sickly. When showing people you can have the hand shake and be very stiff. If you blend well, wear long sleeves, and act the part, this effect could really be pulled off nicely.

Dramatic exit—Director J

Harry Potter: Bellatrix Lestrange

Bellatrix Lestrange is one of the really cool characters in Harry Potter. Her character isn’t very dry and she gets a lot of cool parts in the script. Bellatrix is known as a very attractive lady that is a bit beaten up from spending her time in Azkaban. I know it’s close to Halloween, so I thought it’d be a great time to write about an easy character to dress up as!

All you need is a black dress, a wand, an eye shadow palette, lip gloss, a hair curler, a teasing brush, and some powder foundation and bronzer. If you are a girl I am assuming you have most of these things around the house, if not, you can get all of the above at Wal-Mart for under fifty dollars. This shouldn’t take much time unless you have very thick hair that is hard to handle. You could also try hair rollers. 

The first step is to start on your hair because some people sweat while using hot hair accessories and you do not want to sweat your makeup off. Depending on whether you have thin or thick hair you should divide your hair into three to five sections. The tighter the curls you can make the better. Once you get all of your hair curled you should brush through it so that the curls start to look frizzy. The next step is to tease your hair. You should start by grabbing a small section of the top of your hair and spray some hair spray in it. By then you can comb that section of hair backwards and it should stick up like the beef stick guy’s hair. You can do that to multiple layers of your hair to get the thickness and height you prefer and then you can comb over the top to make it smoother. You can pin any part of your hair back that you want to be out of the way or you can style it according to which movie you want to base your look off of.

Now that your hair is done you can move onto your makeup. You want to be pretty pale because she was in Azkaban so she didn’t get much sun. You can apply a light shade of foundation all over your face and be sure to blend down to your neck. The next step is to add a dirty look to her face. You can either use a dark bronzer with a narrow thick brush, or you can also use a grey eye shadow. This can be anywhere on your face, but I recommend to put it on one side of your forehead and to one cheek so it looks evenly distributed. This should be rough yet blended. Bellatrix doesn’t wear much in terms of eye shadow but if you would like you can add a small amount of pink or red to the eyelid. The one thing Bellatrix is big on is her lip gloss. I would use a plum color to show how dark she is.

Last but not least, all you have to do is add a black dress and a wand to your new style and there you are!

Dramatic exit—Director J

Harry Potter: Wand Effect

        Have you ever wanted to make it look like you were casting a spell on someone on video? Let's be honest, we all have thought it would be cool at some point or another. This how-to is going to follow along with many of my other effect how-tos. You will need a video editor, some assets, a wand, and obviously the film that is going to play in the background.

         Here we go. You can obviously choose any wand that you want because the effect really doesn't have anything to do with the way it looks. First thing is first. You need to have the scene filmed that you want the effect in. Obviously the effect will only be a few frames from the scene, but you need to make sure it will seem and look organic. Once you have the scene uploaded, you can add another thing on called a null. Basically, just something to go on top of the scene already uploaded. You can take a picture of a sparkler and add that to the null scene at the frame with the pointed wand in the direction you want the effect to go. You can play around with the size and transparentness of the sparkler to make it seem like it is fading in and out. The next step is to add something that looks like a line of fire. You may wonder why we would even be playing around with fire for a Harry Potter wand effect. Well, truth be old, if you flip it upside down, add a glow to it, and make the flame a bit transparent, it looks really cool and honestly not that much like fire. You can also add a 3-D effect to the flame to make it look like it is going towards and passed your camera to the target of choice.

         You need to make sure that everything is attached to the flame and blended well. Otherwise it will look just like pictures attached to a video. Next step would be to add a lens effect. You can play around with the ones that your editing software allows you, and choose the one that best fits the scenario. Lens flares tend to work the best when playing around with flames. At the very end you can look at what color scheme you want to use in the general video after you blend all the frames together, and then you have this lovely wand trick.

         Last but not least, if you want to add a small explosion then a vinegar bomb would look pretty cool. All you need for a vinegar bomb, is vinegar of your choice, baking soda, saran wrap, and a plastic bottle. It's easy and not very time consuming. If you don't want an explosion and just want sounds, some software have their own sounds and some don't. If yours doesn't, then I'm sure you can find some somewhere on the internet.

        Hope this helped!!

Dramatic exit-- Director J

Harry Potter: Dobby

            Well, I’m a big Harry Potter fan. In fact, I was that stupid teenage girl in the audience that cried when Dobby died. It gets me every time. I’m a teenager, give me a break. Anyhow, I got recent inspiration to re-watch the entire series. And as soon as Dobby died, it hit me. This would be a great how-to! This is going to require some special makeup that is often seasonal, so I’m sorry in advance.

 

            There is crème makeup that many people get around Halloween due to the fact there are a lot of Halloween stores around town. People can also get them during football season because so many people like to paint their bodies for games. You will need a skin color, yellow, light brown, and white. This will give you the perfect tone of Dobby’s skin. Green crème will help with the eyes. Something to mix on and with will also be called for. To get the dirty house-elf look you can use a dark powder with a fluffy brush so it is dusted on and doesn’t actually look like makeup. To get the lines and depth of Dobby’s face you can use brown eye pencils and skin wax for extra oomph. You will also need a black eyeliner and crème. You can buy ears like Dobby’s at Halloween stores or you can search for them online. For his nose, you might be better off just using skin wax.

 

 

                Dobby’s eyes are generally bigger than the common human eye, therefore you can use a special trick to get big eyes without using much. Basically, once you mix the color you want for the skin tone of Dobby, you can start applying all over your face and down your neck, until you reach the point that is going to be covered by clothing. Two to three coats should do the trick. Next would be to make the lines of Dobby’s forehead. You should take your brown eye pencil and make sure that it is sharp enough to make a precise line. He has many wrinkles like an old person with a few more characterizing lines. If you make an angry face and lightly draw in the natural lines your face already has, then you have half the work easily done. There are three curving lines on his forehead that really shouldn’t be on your angry face. However, if you raise your eyebrows, you can get a general idea of where and what the lines should look like. If you squint your eyes you can get the defining lines that Dobby has near his bulbous green eyes. There are only a few more lines you should have to draw in. When you smile really hard, you have lines around your mouth. Pencil those in. Last, but not least, Dobby has some pretty bad bags under his eyes. Let’s face it, being a house-elf is tiring work!

 

                The next step would be to blend these lovely lines in. The lighter you applied them, the easier it will be. If these lines didn’t give you the depth you wanted in Dobby’s face then you can add skin wax in between the three major lines in the forehead and smudge those in to make more dramatic changes in depth. Now you have the basics. You may ask, well my eyes look really tiny, how do I get the huge bulbous ones? I’m getting to that now. If you close your eyes and roughly paint a large circle to your eyebrows and a little over then fill in, INCLUDING YOUR EYEBROWS, then you get a large eye started. Dobby doesn’t have eyebrows, so don’t worry about looking weird. Next is to add the pupil and iris. Dobby has very beautiful green eyes. You can mix many different shades to get all the different rings and parts to come out with a black dot in the middle. Just make a smaller circle within the white that you already painted.  The eyes are really based on opinion so I’m not going to go into detail about how to make eyes. If you can mix a light brown that isn't much darker than the original shade you used all over your face to go around the eyes it adds depth and detail. Dobby doesn't have eyebrows or eyelashes so adding hair won't be necessary.


               Now you have every other feature excluding the nose and ears. You already have the ears from buying or making them, not sure what you would like to do. To make the nose we are going to go back to the skin wax. His nose is very large and triangular. You can add layer on layer of skin wax until you get the shape you would like. I suggest using a picture to base the nose off of. Just keep in mind, the skin wax melts very quickly. If you add lotion or Vaseline to your fingers then it won't melt as fast while you work with it.


               Any other details or questions you might need help with, feel free to post as a comment and I’ll get back to ya!


Dramatic exit-- Director J

World War Z Explosion

       Well, I am a minor so telling you to use alcohol to spit fire wouldn't be the best idea now would it? However, in World War Z there are a few explosions I think you could duplicate with a fire breather. These explosions aren't too exaggerated but they are still good enough to be credited.

Since I’m assuming there aren't very many adults that are going to be trying to replicate this, I am not going to go into much detail about fire breathing. Just in case you were wondering, paraffin is what most fire breathers use. Paraffin is a lamp oil. I’m sure there are many videos of fire breathers online by this year. If you use computer software like talked about in my previous post, The Frighteners Ghost, you can record while watching the video.

All you need to do is go to a few seconds before the puff of fire that you want starts and then start recording. You should end the recording a few seconds after the puff. Next you can upload it to your new video. The video you upload it to should have the scenery and all other things you want happening in the background. The next step is to start editing. There is a selecting tool that will let you make any shape you want by dragging and clicking points. What you need to do with that is go around the are that has fire frame by frame so that the fire is the only thing that is left. You can then add it to the existing video and sync it. There are many other options such as making the fire more or less transparent so you can get the right effect you want over your existing frames. There is also a way to fix the pixilation if they do not match up. You want them to look as similar as possible.

Now what you want to do is get really nit-picky. You can do this by zooming in on each individual frame and selecting and deleting everything from either of the videos that is making you unsatisfied. You especially want to make sure that the sound from the fire breather is not on there. You can edit it out easily. After that you can sync the videos together and rotate the fire so it looks like the explosion is right side up and close to the ground.

By now you should have something that looks similar to an explosion. You may be asking, well what if I want the sound of an explosion as well as the look? You can do the same exact process with an audio file. It is very simple. Al you do is select the time frame you want to upload from the video file and go through the same uploading process as you did with the videos. Just find the sound of an explosion that best fit’s the explosion you have created.

Another route you could go is to make your own vinegar and baking soda bomb but that wouldn’t be nearly as large or fire-y as it is in World War Z.

That’s all for tonight!

Dramatic exit-- Director J

World War Z Wound with SPOILER ALERT

                Before you really get into reading this post, SPOILER ALERT!!!!!!

               

                So, in World War Z there comes a point where there is a certain accident and there is an object stabbed through the main character. Today, I am going to show you how to do that in a smaller part of your body like your arm and then you can apply it to whatever you want with slight changes. Basically what you need for this effect is skin wax, red eye shadow palette, brushes, fake blood, liquid latex, foundation, and the object you want sticking out.

                First thing is first, you need to shave the area that you want this wound to be at. If you don’t, things may not stick as well and it will hurt more to take off. You are going to start by rolling a sausage of skin wax, however large you need, and apply it to your shaved area. You need to smudge it into your skin and make sure it is blended into your skin enough so that it doesn’t just look like something is sitting on your body. Next you will slice the sausage with an appropriate length for the object that is going to stick into your skin. You need to put foundation on and around the skin wax to make it blend into your actual skin. Then you can take the red eye shadow palette and make the wound and skin around the wound look irritated and infected. A darker color needs to go into the sliced part of the wound so you can see depth. Now that you get the general look you want you can add the piece you want sticking out of the wound. To do this you need to adhere it with liquid latex. Let it dry and then you can add any other touches you want to the wound to make it look more realistic. The finishing touch is the fake blood. If you add a glob to the sliced part of the wound and around the item sticking out, you can make it look very real. You can even add streaks of the fake blood running places to add the effect of you moving places with the injury.

                If you need more help with the wound you can go ahead and look at The Frighteners Cuts.

Dramatic exit—Director J

World War Z Zombie

                I watched World War Z this week. Let me tell you, it is crazy insane!! Normally I’m not fazed by zombie movies, but holy cow! At first I couldn’t think of how to get someone to look like a zombie from this movie, so I looked it up on YouTube. I watched countless videos and I still didn’t find any techniques that I felt were suitable for what I’m trying to provide. Everything was either too advanced, not advanced enough, or it used items that I didn’t feel someone could buy easily or for a reasonable amount of money. I decided to come up with something myself.

                I hope this works. I have been thinking for awhile about this… actually, like all week. I came to the conclusion that I want to just mix some techniques together, and then add some other elements to give it the right touch. If you can get your hands on a makeup primer that would be ideal due to the amount of makeup I am going to have you pile upon your face. You will also need a very light foundation and powder for your skin tone that is still logical. You need a brownish blush with a thin line brush, a green eye shadow that looks sickly, a red eye pencil, black eye shadow, and liquid latex with a brush you don’t care much about.

                After you prime your face, you can start by caking the light foundation on your face. You need to look really light because you are the undead so you don’t have this pumping heart to make you a pretty color. After you get the foundation on you should apply the same color powder so the color really sets. To get a sickly color you are going to take the green eye shadow and apply a small amount to your cheeks and forehead. Blend it in so it doesn’t just look like you have blotchy green spots on your skin. Next we want to make you look sunken in because you are starved for human flesh… yummy. Anyways, you can take your black eye shadow and apply it lightly to your eyes, all the way from your eye lids to your bags. You should start very light so you can get a good shade since black is such a dramatic color. Now we can make your cheeks and temples sunken in. We are going to use the brown color and the straight blush brush to make lines right where you suck your cheeks in when you make a fish face. At this point you should also apply a little to your temples. Blend, blend, blend! Blending makes the difference between a good effect and a tacky effect. Lastly for the base, we are going to apply a red eye pencil to the bottom of your eye, right where you put regular eyeliner. This will make you look tired and infected.

                If you want, you can make texture in your faces and make your eyes go along with the zombie stereotype. You will make the texture and cuts in your face before you apply the foundation. You can add cuts to your face by following my previous post, The Frighteners Cuts. If you want to have a creepy eye color you can easily buy contacts that are colored and not prescribed. If you go with this I would buy this crazy red color, I’d go with silver to a very creepy light blue because in World War Z they zombies have these glazed eyes and the blue or silver will get you close to that look.

                Hope this worked well for you!

Dramatic exit—Director J